


The Undeniable Opportunity

by rjn



Category: Baywatch (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Lifeguards, M/M, Other, Slash, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-09 09:56:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: Eddie is tired of being a joke to everyone.





	The Undeniable Opportunity

1.

“Atta boy. Get your breath back. There you go. Nice and steady, so I can kill you off properly.”

Even consumed by choking up a half gallon of seawater, the casual mention of murder stuns Eddie enough that he stops hacking for a moment. He falls over onto his back, Cort’s hands easing him down. He lies there, blinking up at the sky and gasping like a fish out of water, before his wheeze turns into a sputtering cough again. He struggles against it until Cort rolls him back over onto his side.

“Perfect, Eddie. Really sell it.”

He is so confused. He doesn’t know exactly where he is or how he got there. He definitely could be dying, from the way he feels. But why his good friend Cort would be encouraging his demise, is anybody’s guess, and a truly upsetting prospect.

It’s coming back to him in pieces. Like putting a puzzle together, Eddie thinks around the edges of what he knows and hopes the fuzzy center of it comes together. There was the big guy trying to strangle him to death. Cort had got clocked in the head and wasn’t much help for a while and the fight wasn’t going Eddie’s way even before he started to slip and then… nothing, really. The next thing he knows he was lying here puking seawater all over himself with a familiar stupid face looming over him.

“Cort? What the hell…”

His voice is too ragged from coughing to talk. He can see now they’re on the back of the boat. His legs are dangling over the end of the diving platform. With every wave he’s lying in an intermittent three inches of water, Cort kneeling beside him, holding his neck with one hand and keeping his face from dipping under.

Cort shushes him, slapping a hand over Eddie’s mouth, but lightly, more of a warning than an attempt to smother out any sounds he might make, and talks from the side of his mouth.

“Either sound like you’re dying or shut the hell up, okay?”

Eddie gets his hands up, pushing ineffectually at him, trying to get a bit more breathing room between them.

“Back off… a second…” he pants, but Cort cries out at the same time, theatrically drowning out Eddie’s voice with something that sounds like “oh God no” and then Cort’s eyes widen angrily, with _meaning_ at him and he starts to get it. The big guy is still there, and he can hear them.

Spencer, Eddie thinks. The big guy was named Spencer, which is kind of a nerdy name for a violent criminal, but he had turned out to be a well-spoken dealer in high end weapons guidance systems in addition to being a menacing overgrown thug, so Spencer on the whole is about par for an acquaintance of John D. Cort. Eddie almost dying is pretty on-brand for Cort too, and the black-market locator beacon scam that got them into this mess is just another formulaic chapter of the guy’s life story.

What was it this time? Just a few dirt-cheap beacons to attach to all the Baywatch ATVs and jetskis, and anything else that can go walking away in the current rash of vehicular theft. Why not? Plus, Cort got them such a great deal on the things, they’d probably use a bunch to set out some bait boats with Garner. Or they would have, if Cort hadn’t seen something in the same warehouse when they went to pick up the beacons. Something that looked like stereo equipment to Eddie, but Cort had recognized as heavy duty weapons guidance systems. Cort had pushed Eddie into a stack of old boards piled near a wall, and in the ensuing clamour, he had stolen key parts the first chance he got, “you know, for the safety of the nation” or some crazy thing that made perfect sense according to his dramatically skewed sense of honor and duty.

“Breathe, Eddie, breathe!” yells Cort, in an intensely emotional way that wouldn’t quite ring true, even in the event of Eddie’s actual death. He knows this, because Cort has managed to almost kill him a handful of times, and he’s always very calm about that sort of thing.

Cort leans over him again, doing such a good job of acting in the moment that Eddie braces for him to blow in his mouth, with all his stupid saltwater bad breath and two-day stubble.

“Whatever you do, don’t lose this,” Cort whispers instead, breath hot on Eddie’s ear before the swell of a wave mutes him out. He can feel something getting shoved into the front pocket of his jeans and then Cort is being dramatic again, telling Eddie not to leave him. _Oh, cruel world, goodnight sweet prince, _et cetera.

The beacons. That’s what Cort was telling him not to lose. It must be. One of the beacons is now in Eddie’s soaking wet pocket and another, presumably, in Cort’s possession. His oxygen starved brain finally puts it together. Cort wants to get Eddie off the boat and out of harm’s way before he makes whatever stupid reckless move he wants to make. The kind of reckless move that he will only survive due to his Navy SEAL training and the surgically implanted horseshoes up his ass. Big Guy Spencer and Cort (at gunpoint, Eddie has to assume, because that’s generally the only way Cort can be made to do anything most days) will speed off to find the missile parts or whatever Cort supposedly stashed in open water where only he can find it (“It’s called insurance, Eddie”).

And they will leave Eddie’s lifeless corpse in their wake. Cue Mitch and Craig, who are maintaining a discreet distance and relying on the beacon signals, to speed in and scoop Eddie up out of the water so the three of them can track Cort’s beacon. Provided the goddamn things are actually working, which is questionable, given the integrity of the guy selling them; namely Spencer, most recently memorable for having nearly beaten and drowned Eddie to death, just moments ago.

He feels the familiar anxiety flow over him. The nervous condition that comes part and parcel with being what Craig calls “chief apprentice at Cort bullshit”. It’s more of a helpless feeling than a fear, a lack of control over the spiralling shenanigans and swelling danger. But the fear is there too. Eddie takes a few deeper breaths, but he times it wrong and sucks in a gulp of seawater as the platform dips. He chokes, filled with a sudden sense of dread at the understanding; that so soon after getting dragged out of the water half-drowned, he’s going to get tossed right back in. And this time he’ll have to play possum, a dead man’s float for as long as he can hold it, so Spencer doesn’t look back and figure out that Cort is playing him.

“Eddie? You okay? It’s kind of important, with what we’re about to do here.”

It’s Cort’s actual crisis voice, low and concerned, and calm. It helps. A lot of the time, when everything seems FUBAR, Cort is in control. He’s earned a certain amount of trust, not for avoiding insane and perilous situations, but for at least getting everyone out of them eventually. Eddie nods, eyes watering with the effort not to get into another coughing jag.

“Just give me another second,” he rasps instead.

Eddie, resigned to the fate of his hopefully exaggerated and temporary demise, takes a moment to steady his nerves. Cort, sensing the relinquishing of Eddie’s last shred of good sense, practically beams down at him, thrilled to have Eddie on board, briefly in the literal sense, with his ludicrous plan. Eddie is a little ashamed at how much Cort’s approval means to him when it comes to these stupid schemes, like he’s Cort’s partner in crime instead of just the rookie tag-along. (Cort says: _a crime against criminals isn’t a real crime._ But just try telling Craig that.)

Cort throws his hands up and pretends to pound on Eddie’s chest, then goes through a cartoonish simulation of chest compressions and rescue breaths that are so terrible that Eddie wonders how the guy manages to keep his lifeguard certification year after year.

“He’s not breathing!”

Cort actually jabs Eddie in the stomach as he says it, earning an indignant grunt and confirmation that Eddie has, in fact, caught his breath back. When he feels up to it, as ready as he’ll ever be, Eddie gives a slight nod, okay let’s get it over with, and receives a wink and a swift pat on the side of his face in return.

“You killed him,” screams Cort, hysterical. “You killed my best friend!”

Eddie chokes out a laugh at the display, so hilariously un-Cort-like, and gets another snort full of water for his trouble. Cort jumps to his feet and digs his heel into Eddie’s side to nudge him, rolling, off the edge of the platform. The last thing he sees before he’s in the water is Cort charging up the length of the boat at Spencer in a careless, distraught-looking whirl. _Try not to get shot you stupid asshole,_ thinks Eddie, the solemn prayer of all John D. disciples, and then he is on his own.

2.

By the time Craig and Mitch find him, he’s on the edges of exhaustion. His eyes are closed and he’s letting himself sink lower, treading water as slowly as he dares, mostly just kicks, floating on his back when the wave action is easy enough. The first wash of panic is just starting to twig in him, the realization that he can’t keep it up much longer with his lungs being what they are after his first near-drowning on the day, when he hears Craig yell at Mitch to cut the engine. He hadn’t even heard the _engine_, is how far out of it he is. Still, he’s slightly insulted at the way Craig puts it.

_“There he is,”_ Craig says. Dull tone, casually, like this is just the normal part of the John D. Cort caper where we pull Eddie out of the water.

He rankles again when he opens his eyes, at the way Craig dives; beautifully performed, a perfect arc for show and a smooth entry instead of the frantic jackknife jump-and-splash at full speed that a rescue usually entails. Eddie, adrenalin deserting him, sinks under briefly and swallows the water that will serve them right later, when it comes back up on them in the boat, complete with whatever else his stomach has left to offer. He goes to raise his fingers out of the water, to give Craig a nine from the Philadelphia judges for the jerk-off dive, or maybe just two middle fingers, but his arms can’t seem to break the surface.

“Eddie, what happened?”

Mitch, yelling from the scarab. At least he sounds concerned. Good old Mitch. He knows Eddie, ever eager to impress the boss with feats of athleticism, will keep his head above water at least long enough to answer. Stamina, Mitch is quick to remind female lifeguards (and Eddie), is as important as size and strength. Although Eddie is more speed than stamina, a fact that does very little to help him this far out in open water. All he can do is wait.

“Cort threw me off the boat,” Eddie calls back to him, surprised at how weakly it comes out.

His voice has gone weedy, but Mitch hears anyway. Mitch smiles at him.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Lover’s quarrel?”

It’s a little sick how much amusement floats the words. He remembers that Mitch also sucks. Drowning might not be so bad if it taught Eddie’s asshole friends a lesson.

And then Craig has got an arm under his, and the scarab is getting closer. Or maybe Craig is swimming them towards it; it’s hard to say for sure. He’s numb and his brain seems like it’s working half-speed. He hears his name called a few more times, but nobody is screaming hysteria at him and nobody is giving him fake mouth-to-mouth, so he lets himself be tucked into the boat, wind over the gunwale just reaching the top of his head, soothing in his hair.

3.

“Just leave him alone. He finally fell asleep.”

“I’ll let him sleep. I just wanna, you know, see he’s okay.”

Eddie, of course, is not really asleep. No way he sleeps before he can see for himself that Cort is alive. He’d heard gunfire, and Mitch yelling, but he hadn’t been able to haul himself up enough to watch the takedown over the bow. If Cort got his way, most of the action should have been over with by the time Craig and Mitch had turned up to help anyways. He likes them as a clean-up crew, mainly. Cort doesn’t appreciate them saving his ass as much as he should, Eddie thinks, but then, Eddie might not be one to talk these days.

Craig had filled him in on the way back to headquarters, assuring him that everything was okay. Cort had got winged a little, the bullet from betrayed Spencer glancing off his arm, horseshoes in full effect. But that’s also the kind of thing Craig would say to make Eddie feel better, slyly calming in lawyerly tones, _only a tiny bit shot._

Eddie sits up and a bunch of things slide off him, off the sofa, and onto the sand-burnished floor of the headquarters lounge; a blanket, Craig’s jacket, another blanket, a damp towel. He must have been flailing a little, the stupid recurring drowning nightmare that doesn’t go away no matter how many times he skirts the reality. Gina was the one who figured out he sleeps better weighed down. Before that, in the early days of his tenancy, an accidental thrashing nap he took on their living room floor (he had rolled off the couch) had scared her enough she’d called Craig at a work meeting.

Freed from the mountain of makeshift bedding, Eddie peers over the back of the sofa. Cort is alive. The beanpole cowboy looks pretty good standing there, all things considered. Craig is also there, standing nearby with a steadying hand on Cort’s back. A bandage is wrapped around Cort’s bicep, his arm is in a sling, and a smile lights his face up when he sees Eddie looking at him over the cushions.

“You should be in the hospital,” Eddie tells him.

“Buddy, you’ve got no room to talk.”

Craig does worried eyes at them, looking from Eddie to Cort and back with his usual combination platter of concern and bemusement, a touch of barely contained _knows best_ as garnish.

Apparently, Craig trusts them to sit on the sofa without legal counsel, because when Cort saunters over and shoves Eddie’s legs down for a space to sit, Craig wanders a few steps away and pretends to review the contents of the fridge. Eddie gestures to his own bicep and notices for the first time how drained he is; the effort of raising himself to a sitting position is exhausting.

“You’re okay? You got shot?” he asks, when he’s reasonably sure his shaking hand is pointing roughly where the bandage would be on his counterpart.

Cort, nodding, “It was just a graze. You?”

He gestures kind of all over the place, like Eddie is a holistic disaster compared to the neatly contained piercing of Cort’s arm. Eddie nods back, then lets his head fall onto the cushion behind him. He feels much better when his eyes are closed, like even the muscle group that works his eyelids are in a state of total exhaustion.

“It’s a good thing you stuck that beacon on me. If Mitch and Craig had been one minute later, I would have been under deep.”

There’s a dull clank as Craig drops something to the floor over in the kitchenette. A whispered curse. Cort goes oddly still.

“Yeah… right… the beacon,” he says, in the shifty way he has when he’s about to disappoint his friends.

Eddie, tentatively, “Cort?”

But he’s too tired to follow up, so he just looks plaintively at Craig. _Can you deal with this?_ Because Craig loves to hash this kind of thing out. Craig will be a judge one day. Something in the way he sorts and files wrongdoings into neat piles, a complete purge and airing of grievances, restoring balance to all their relationships. And he does have a soft spot for Cort, a tolerance he doesn’t hold for many, but its nothing compared to the kind of all-encompassing devotion Craig has for Gina and, increasingly, for Eddie. So if Cort needs a talking to, Craig is the guy to do it on Eddie’s behalf.

But Craig doesn’t have much to say, apparently. He tilts his head to one side and glares at Cort.

“Go ahead. Tell him.”

“It was the inverter key,” Cort says in a rush. “In your pocket. I didn’t think of planting a beacon on you until it was too late.”

“You mean you just left me.” Eddie’s voice is a pathetic croak.

“I thought Mitch and Craig were closer.”

“You left me to drown.”

“I trusted you with the missile inverter key. That’s how highly I think of you.”

“You left me to drown? In the middle of the ocean?”

Eddie is aware that his voice cracks, in the shrill pubescent way it does that he’s forever being teased about, but he can’t be bothered to care.

“After I pulled you out the first time, remember,” says Cort. “I saved your life.”

The infuriating Cort logic has him sputtering, speechless. Craig has closed the distance from the kitchen to stand at the back of the sofa, strategically equidistant from each of them. If Eddie were feeling a little better, he thinks he could maybe get a shot or two in on Cort before Craig could stop him anyways, especially with the sling on Cort’s good arm, but he’s feeling weak, and sluggish, and Cort has twice the reach going for him on his worst day. Flying tackles have been out of the question since the day Eddie surprised him from a tower for some roughhousing, and Cort had collapsed on the sand laughing his head off. Laughing too hard to fight back wound up being the best way to stymy Eddie’s attack, and then Cort started in with the teasing that had sent Eddie to the Pomeroy’s encyclopedias to look up what sugar gliders are. The problem with a lot of Cort insults is that they work doubly harsh when Eddie doesn’t understand them.

“You left me in the water and just hoped they’d come along and find me?”

“It made a kind of sense,” Craig says. “He had his reasons. When you’re feeling better, you’ll hear him out.”

And Eddie can’t believe Craig’s loyalty isn’t staunchly on the side of the guy who didn’t drag them into this mess in the first place, but his eyes are burning from too much time in the water, and he’s getting cold again with his nest of blankets fallen to the floor, so he just hunches in on himself, closes his eyes, and pretends to go back to sleep. He can’t physically send Cort packing, but this strategy might just get rid of him.

“It was either chuck you out, or watch Spencer shoot you in the back of the head,” comes Cort’s voice.

Eddie can feel a hand on his arm, trying to pull him back upright, to shake him awake.

“Let him sleep some more.” Craig’s voice.

Eddie has a splitting headache, he is starting to realize, and he wonders if it’s from getting beat up, or the oxygen deprivation from near-drowning incident number one, or just sheer exhaustion after incident number two. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter and wishes he could do the same with his ears.

“He’s not sleeping,” Cort says, a small hint of anger surfacing in his voice.

“Just leave him be. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

The hand on his arm slides away and the voices drift, Craig presumably leading Cort away. There’s shuffling, Cort pulling loose and getting back in Eddie’s face.

“I made the right call. You’re one of the strongest swimmers I know,” says Cort.

His parting shot is going to be weak if it relies on that blatant attempt at ass kissing. Eddie is the fastest, but not nearly the strongest.

“But you’re sure as hell not bulletproof,” he concludes, not weakly after all. Kind of good point.

“Leave it alone,” says Craig. From his tone, Eddie can tell he’s not keen to think about how close they might have been to a bullet in the back of Eddie’s head either.

One of them pulls on Eddie’s feet. Cort, he thinks, clumsily and a little rougher than necessary, and Craig more carefully shifting his head and shoulders for him until he’s lying back down, and he feels a jacket placed back over him. Then blankets, towels, whatever they’re using to weigh him down that stops the flailing and shivering. Falling asleep feels like being pulled underwater.

4.

When he wakes up, there’s pizza, and Mitch is holding a water bottle in his face.

“Drink this.”

Eddie likes to give Mitch at least token resistance when it comes to anything outside of lifeguarding, but his throat is sandpaper and his mouth is dry. He’s never been thirstier in his life, actually. He can smell something delicious and he’s certain he’s also the hungriest he’s ever been in his life, save for a stint in one particularly difficult foster home. When he drains the bottle and attempts to say thanks, all that comes out is a questing “pizza?” but Mitch just laughs at him.

“Craig didn’t feel like hauling you home for Gina’s lasagna, so he ordered in a consolation dinner for you before he left. Gina was worried about you too, by the way. Make sure you stop in to see her when you go home.”

Mitch takes up the other half of the sofa and watches, wincing in sympathy as Eddie bends forward, trying to stretch his back.

“I will never understand how you guys can sleep on these horrible sofas. At least you’re… compact.”

He is noticeably pleased with himself when Eddie’s face goes dark at the short comment.

“Cort’s up in my office. His legs hang off the end of the couch.”

“My heart breaks for the guy who left me to die at sea.”

Eddie tries standing up, eager to follow his nose to the pizza and to get away from whatever defence Mitch launches into on Cort’s behalf. If Craig wants him to hear Cort out, Mitch will want him to full on apologize to the guy for making too big of a splash rolling off the boat to die. He gets his feet planted and hoists himself up but finds it too unsteady and decides to take a bit of a breather first.

“Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie says through a yawn. “Just tired.”

“We moved things around, gave you a few shifts off.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Sure. Because you look great.”

Mitch emphasizes this with a pat on Eddie’s leg and a sarcastic thumbs up. Eddie can’t remember changing out of his soaked clothes, but he’s got on his sweats now and he doesn’t think he wants to know who helped with that.

“Wait. Cort’s still here?”

“Upstairs.”

Cort had already overstayed his usual limit for a fly-through. He had been antsy the last few days, even before the whole missile guidance theft thing. Eddie had been running low on patience for it, the frenetic energy and the constant needling from Cort about his own lack of wanderlust; _you really haven’t been anywhere? _ Like it’s any surprise with his history, that Eddie would desperately want to settle in somewhere, put down roots and bask in the pseudo-family embrace of the fraternity of lifeguards.

“I thought he had the spearfishing thing. Thailand.”

“I’m pretty sure that was a cover story,” says Mitch. He raises his eyebrows dramatically. “Let’s just say he has with him a suspiciously large stash of Argentinian Pesos.”

“Might not be far enough away, when I get my energy back.”

Mitch frowns.

“Maybe go a little easy on him, Eddie. I’ve never seen him like this, uh, this upset.”

“Then you missed the show he put on when he was pretending that I was dead. You know, right before he left me to actually die.”

Mitch swivels his head around, making sure nobody is in earshot before he leans in. He looks more bothered than Eddie was expecting and it’s throwing him off-balance. He wonders idly if he’s said something stupid and just didn’t realize in the fog of exhaustion.

Apparently satisfied that the break area is uncharacteristically empty, Mitch talks in a steady, quiet tone.

“When we caught up to them, Spencer was waving a gun around. And Cort saw us coming and just… He didn’t see you, because you were sat down there…”

“Is this going to be another short joke?”

It’s definitely the wrong thing to say. Mitch’s eyes and nostrils flare. What is it with these guys getting mad at him for almost dying instead of at Cort, who almost _murdered_ him?

“You were pretty much lying down by then, anyways. The point is, Cort couldn’t see you and he had to assume, in the moment, that Craig and I had missed you.”

“Which you could have done,” protests Eddie. “Pretty easily.”

And maybe that’s what nobody is understanding. How near a thing it was, how close he’d been to going under.

“I think he made the only decision he could, just to give you any chance at all, Eddie. And when it looked like it hadn’t worked, he couldn’t live with that. He made this insane, suicidal rush on a guy holding a gun…”

“Okay, I get it.”

But he doesn’t, not entirely. It dawns on him that Cort and Craig and Mitch have all been acting a little traumatized. Being angry at them for what could have gone wrong sort of ignores everything that did go wrong, and from what Eddie can tell, he wasn’t the only close call.

“When we finally got him on the boat and he saw you slumped in there… It was bad.”

“Okay, yeah. I’ll talk to him.”

He says it in a conciliatory tone, but really Eddie just doesn’t want to hear any more of it. Mitch’s head shakes slowly, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to read something on Eddie’s face.

“He’s kind of crazy about you. You know that, right?”

Eddie is too exhausted and starving and wrung out to figure out what the hell that’s supposed to mean, so he just shrugs his aching shoulders.

“Sure. I mean, we get along great.”

Mitch laughs at him and then, taking pity, gets up to bring the pizza box over. Eddie finishes the whole thing in record setting time.

5.

He spends the night at headquarters, watching late night infomercials, napping on the couch. He takes a shower when he has the energy, to wash off the salt and maybe soothe the nasty sunburn he’s sporting, but when he licks the inside of his forearm experimentally, it’s only salty from his own miserable sweaty nightmaring. Great. Not only did Craig, or worse yet, Mitch or Cort, coax him out of his Pacific-soaked jeans and into sweats at his drowsy worst, they’d also seemingly hosed him down. He’s struck by the same particular discomfiting feeling, bordering on dehumanizing, that manifests when they use him for training scenarios, just because he’s the smallest guy to haul around. A living training dummy. Maybe when Craig and Mitch accuse him of having a short fuse, they should consider how little bodily autonomy he has on a given day, and how eminently frustrating that can be, surrounded by blond haired blue eyed Adonis types . Eddie was first in his class at rookie school, but he’s always treated a little like a mascot. A sense of humor when they pluck him out of the water after any kind of incident, but no mention of his saves, of his record for handling problem towers and being fearless.

Eddie drags the shower out, enjoying the nighttime quiet, and the free-flowing hot water that had hardly been a guarantee in his life up to now. His first position locker, which he’d earned with that rookie school standing, is split down the middle. His stuff is shoved to one side to accommodate Cort’s meager possessions for however long he’s in town. Nobody asked if he was okay with it, they were only surprised that Cort would even accommodate half-way. _He must really like you._ Eddie accidentally-on-purpose spills the cologne that Cort hates onto the towel hanging on Cort’s half of the locker when he gets dressed to leave.

Gina is waiting on him when he finally gets home. He doesn’t have a chance to use his own entrance, because she calls to him from the window, yelling before he’s even close to the building and tells him to _get his ass up here, right now_.

“You look like death,” she says at the door, in the gabbing tone she would use to tell him about someone else who she thinks looks terrible.

The normalcy of it, after the tension-wrought interactions with the guys, is heartwarming, though Eddie is starting to get a little concerned about how supposedly fatal-looking is his case of exhaustion. He guesses it’s more than the fatigue. He’s also got some skin problems from being in the sun and salt for however long it had been between boats. Someone had first aided some salve onto the tops of his ears, his nose, even his lips where the burning was worst. His eyes are still red and itchy, even after hours of sleeping. It’s also a little bit concerning that nobody has been able, or at least willing, to give him an estimate of how long he was in the water. He thinks it was maybe an hour, but that doesn’t square with some of the skin problems. Or with the way Craig had gone from show-off diving to a full-on rescue carry when getting him out of the water.

“Is it really that bad?”

“You look a bit… crispy. And exhausted. And are those bruises around your eyes?”

“Yeah, most likely.”

His nose might have got a little bit broken, he thinks, in the fight with Spencer, and the raccoon look is a direct by-product. He’s the tiniest bit pleased by the nose adjustment, though. He always wanted more of a boxer’s face.

“Oh, my god, Eddie. Let me get an ice pack. Then you rest. Craig took your tower for the day, or he’d be here to bully you into resting too.”

“I’m fine. Really. I think everyone is just shaken up. To be honest with you, I’m starting to get real sick of people making a fuss.”

Gina, who has had her head stuck in the freezer, whips around to narrow her eyes at him.

“That just goes for other people, though. Not me.”

Eddie laughs.

“Fuss away. I’m going to sleep a bit more either way.”

He finds it harder than he’d thought, to sleep it off. His sunburnt neck and shoulders ache on the pillow and his headache ebbs and surges in a constant cycle now. Every time he thinks it’s gone, it starts creeping back on him. Gina has propped open the door to his suite, allegedly for his benefit, in case he needs anything. He can hear her on the phone, making her art world business calls in hushed tones. He tries to eavesdrop, always kind of fascinated by the professional lives Gina and Craig have carved out for themselves. Eventually he gives up on the sleeping. The whole nap idea was mostly an “other people avoidance technique” anyways. He goes to raid the Pomeroy’s refrigerator instead.

“Would you be upset if I had some of these leftovers?” he asks when Gina is off the phone.

He already has the dish out and uncovered, but he’s confident it’s fine. Gina always encourages Eddie’s enthusiasm for leftovers and takes it as a tremendous compliment to her cooking. Gina loves feeding people, looking after people, drawing people into her circle of hospitality and caring for them. Eddie figures Craig had no idea what he was getting himself into when he brought a homeless human disaster over to meet Gina. Or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing. He did get a little bit of a smug look on his face that first time Gina and Eddie met, stupidly proud, like a cat that had fetched a dead bird to the doorstep.

But man, can Gina cook. Always couched in a self-deprecating forewarning that she was “trying something new”, Gina dishes up the best food Eddie has ever eaten. Craig’s favorite way to wind her up is to feign ambivalence towards her perfectly created dishes, but Eddie always ruins the joke, by practically swooning, and offering to take Craig’s plate off his hands, if he really feels that way.

Instead of rushing to instruct Eddie on the best way to reheat the lasagna, what he might add to it to make a complete meal, her whole big production she does, Gina just says his name.

“Um. Eddie?”

She’s standing by the elevator, which is moving. Eddie hadn’t heard her buzz someone in, but if she was expecting someone, she would have watched out the window while she was on her phone call, and the visitor would have been greeted at the door by the sound of the system already buzzing them in. Gina is welcoming and demanding in equal parts when it comes to company.

Eddie sets the food down on the countertop and shoots her a questioning look. Gina ignores him, doesn’t meet his eyes until the elevator doors open and Cort steps in. He slides the gate back and swings the apartment door closed behind him, gives Gina a kiss on the cheek and shoves his hands into his pockets before he even notices Eddie is standing there.

“Oh. Hey, Eddie. I thought you were sleeping.”

“He just woke up,” Gina tells him.

“I was going to offer to take you to breakfast,” Cort says. “Unless you’re already…”

“What? Attempted murder doesn’t rate a steak dinner anymore?”

The last time Cort had got him into serious trouble, he’d treated Eddie to a Porter-Mancini fight and a steak dinner at Roth’s. Eddie’s pretty sure Cort had taken a nice pile of cash from the scam that time, so maybe he can only afford breakfast today. Maybe Spencer didn’t have any cash for Cort to pocket as “spoils of war”.

Eddie wonders idly why Cort would come over knowing he was sleeping, just to be on hand for when he woke up, but then Cort is that kind of guy, who would probably wake a guy up to ask him something that could easily be handled over the phone.

He expects him to come back at him with some kind of sarcastic gripe about Eddie’s expensive tastes, but surprisingly, something like relief passes over Cort’s face.

“Yeah, man. If you want to get dinner instead, we can do that. Whatever you want.”

Gina is looking between them with an annoyingly pleased look on her face. If Craig is all about hashing out détentes through vigorous debate, her M.O. is building bridges through shared meals.

“Sure,” says Eddie simply. “Dinner is fine.”

He doesn’t exactly feel like going out for anything given the way he looks and feels, but if he tries to hole up in his room the entire evening, Gina and Craig will smother him to death with their embracing concern.

Cort is standing kind of awkwardly near the door, and it occurs to Eddie that maybe the intention was to stop by and leave Gina to pass along the invitation. An “I stopped by but you were sleeping” thing, to get credit for being a good friend without actually having to face Eddie so soon after throwing him to the sharks.

“You know where I’m staying,” says Cort finally. “Come by at seven.”

6.

Eddie has known Cort to bed down for the night in a condemned building, in the back of a pick-up truck under a bridge, and in several occasions, on the dusty ground under open sky. The man only has a half dozen possessions and one of them is his shabby but trusty bedroll. Eddie’s also seen him just as easily make himself at home on yachts, and in mansions, and five-star hotel rooms. One of the many contradictions that Cort embodies. The guy has never minded pulling up to an elegant ballroom in mud spattered clothes from the motorcycle drive.

His current arrangement seems to split the difference; a small house, right on the beach, and almost entirely devoid of furniture, with entire rooms carpeted in heavy duty plastic sheeting. The actress who owns it has taken a two-month European tour vacation and has extensive renovations planned. The way Cort tells it, more of the overhauls are for her body than the house; there are a pair of “upstairs expansions” forthcoming. Cort, true to his contrast-embracing form, has been camping out on his bedroll on the floor of the empty master bedroom.

Eddie shows up at the house wearing his good going-out clothes, the ones Shauni had picked for him when they were a thing, and the ones that would have to last him for the next ten years at the price, except that Shauni saw dressing him as her own personal financial responsibility. Only fair, she reasoned, since most of their nights out were to events that she chose, benefits and dinner parties where Eddie felt exceedingly uncomfortable no matter how creamy soft his Italian leather shoes were. He wonders if Shauni has heard about this whole ridiculous Cort-sponsored disaster yet. She had left for a trip to Santa Fe with her sister three days after Cort’s arrival, when he’d only just started laying in his routine schemes and scams. Shauni’s skepticism towards Cort would be nice to have around now, when everyone seems to be waiting for Eddie to easily absolve him of all of his rightfully assumed guilt. He also appreciates her wardrobe help in moments like this, because Cort always seems to pull off magic for going out, arriving in town with nothing but a rucksack and bedroll, but stepping out two nights later in a perfectly tailored tuxedo. Eddie thinks he has it right for Roth’s, a blazer over more casual pants and shirt, but when Cort opens the door of the actress’s house, he sees that his dinner companion is barefoot, dressed in jeans and the same lightly bloodstained t-shirt from the day before.

“Am I early?” Eddie asks.

Cort looks down at his shirt as if seeing it for the first time.

“No, I just… do you mind eating here? I’ve got steaks. I’ve got beer. The sunset from the back of this place is unbelievable.”

Eddie considers the night he was expecting; a tense expensive dinner and back home to the Pomeroy’s waiting up for him like he’s an eminently disappointing teenage son. Then he thinks of shooting the shit with Cort like they used to do at the dive shop, beers in their hands, watching the sun go down on the beach.

“That sounds perfect,” he says, surprised at his sudden uplift in mood. “That’s exactly what I want.”

Cort smiles at him, grabbing gently at his shoulder.

“And no scamming of international arms dealers, I promise,” he says as he ushers Eddie into the house and leads the way to the kitchen.

“Don’t even joke about it,” Eddie says with a shake of his head. “We are not there yet.”

Cort gets them each a bottle of beer and uses the edge of what is probably an exceptionally expensive marble countertop to slam them open. He hands one to Eddie and they clink the bottles together before drinking. Cort gestures to a built-in chrome barstool for Eddie to sit on at the kitchen island and takes up a classic Cort pose across from him, his long body bent in the middle, a deep enough lean to get his forearms onto the smooth surface.

“I am going to be a bit more careful about that kind of thing,” he says thoughtfully. “Keep you out of my messes from now on.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Cort stands up and shrugs on his way to the refrigerator.

“I decide what messes I get into,” Eddie clarifies.

Cort runs his hands through his hair. His usual maneuver is to adjust a hat or sunglasses, a feigned nonchalance, but the hair is a variation Eddie’s getting used to. It’s slightly too long, probably meaning Cort hasn’t had a mind-blowing tryst with any overly dramatic scissors-owning women lately. Certain types of women love to clean up a guy like Cort. Dress him up, cut his hair, temporarily harangue the profanity out of him. Sometimes Eddie wonders what would have happened if Shauni had met Cort first, before she’d undertaken the Eddie Kramer renovation project.

Cort’s hands stay in his hair, his beer bottle temporarily resting on the marble.

“I don’t think you realize how bad things got yesterday,” he says.

Eddie almost chokes on a swallow of beer, in such a rush to disagree.

“I don’t think _you_ realize how bad things were. You made me walk the plank like it was a fucking joke.”

Cort visibly flinches before he starts his justification.

“It was the only way to get you out of there,” he says. “Spencer had no use for you, man. The only reason he didn’t shoot right through me to get to you was that he thought I was taking him to the inverters. You were dead either way.”

“And you seemed real broken up about it, too.”

Cort’s hand goes from threading through his hair, to practically tearing at it in the back. His coldly casual crisis voice comes back.

“You know how I am in tight situations. And God knows I am sorry that you’ve seen it as many times as you have, but it’s the training. When the shit hits the fan, I stay cool. I crack jokes.”

Eddie doesn’t want to listen to the line of reasoning any longer. He understands that the guy wanted to kill him. He just doesn’t understand how Cort could be so desperate as to be that careless with him in the first place. Cort has back-up plans on back-up plans when he’s out making trouble with some people. Schemes underlying other schemes, a lot of the spontaneous wildness is an act. It’s only Eddie who seems to wind up out of the loop and fending for himself.

There are a few scrapes on the side of his neck, red welts in the spacing of fingertips, he thinks from Cort scrabbling to pull him from the water the first time, and he rolls the cool base of the beer bottle on it. It’s too much. He let himself get caught up in some crazy Cort saga, characteristically uninformed. Again. And he’d almost died. Twice.

He spots his exit, the promise of breathing room; French doors out to the deck. He leaves Cort standing in the middle of the kitchen, a plate of raw steaks now held hopefully in his hands.

Outside, Eddie leans on the deck railing, nothing below him but a stretch of sand and then ocean as far as the eye can see. He takes deep breaths of fresh air and tries not to relive the anxiety of the previous day, of staring at nothing but horizon in every direction, waiting for a boat that might not make it in time. The sinking feeling seeps in, chest tight with the effort of holding back. He doesn’t hear the doors opening again. He almost jumps out of his skin when Cort’s hand settles between his shoulder blades.

“Take it easy. Slow breaths.”

He twists around to knock Cort’s hand away, even though his advice was exactly what Eddie had been trying to do.

“I’m fine,” he says, though the way he wheeled around in a panic contradicts it. “Just back off a little, okay?”

Cort looks wary, or kind of hurt.

“I thought it would be better for you,” he says softly. “On the boat. If I didn’t let on how scared I was, I thought it would be better. I didn’t want you to panic.”

“It’s fine,” Eddie says, but it comes out gasping.

He turns back to the water. He regains his grip on the railing and focuses on the feeling of solid ground under his feet. It’s easier to breathe when he keeps his eyes open and watches the fluctuating line where the waves meet the sand. He doesn’t realize how much time has passed until Cort is taking his beer bottle from him, holding a glass of water out in its place, folding Eddie’s hand around the glass.

“Take a seat.”

Cort manhandles him to a comfortable lounge chair and turns away to fiddle with the massive propane barbeque on one end of the deck.

“Listen,” he says. “I don’t doubt you can handle yourself. I’ve never worried about you in a fight or in the water. But the stuff I get into sometimes… Eddie, if anything really bad ever happened to you and it was my fault, I’d be done. There’d be no coming back from something like that.”

Cort keeps puttering with getting dinner started the entire time he’s talking. It’s mildly aggravating, in a familiar way. Eddie shakes his head. He tries to say something snippy about how actually he’d be the one not coming back from it, because _what the actual hell, Cort._ What comes out instead surprises him and is, lamentably, sort of pathetic sounding.

“You _left_ me.”

Cort drops the utensil he’d been holding, and it clangs on the grill, louder than his voice. He stares at Eddie with the kind of seriousness that he only ever shows when he’s trying to do something difficult the right way. Chin-ups, swimming, working on his bike. Things that he never approaches with Cort™ shortcuts. He is concentrating.

“It won’t ever happen again,” he says.

“Sure it will. It’ll happen tomorrow. Or the next day.”

Cort squints at him, ocean blue eyes narrowed and his mouth just slightly open. Eddie realizes too late how it sounded, like he was more upset about Cort’s impending departure than any of the close calls of the last forty-eight hours. But then, why shouldn’t he be? He risks his life for Cort as a matter of course, they all do, whenever he drops into town. Don’t they deserve a little more loyalty than whatever three-day hit-and-run visit Cort has in him? Eddie, of all people, is used to running with a pretty wild bunch, so it shouldn’t feel so much like abandonment, but at the same time, if anybody is an expert on what abandonment feels like, Eddie Kramer’s the guy. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s no coincidence that Craig and Mitch are always shaken up, stressed out and high-strung, for days after Cort slams through town like a hurricane. But Eddie handles it differently. He gets angry more than anything, and he puts his head down and works to be a better person, stronger maybe, or more self-sufficient, something a little closer to the kind of indestructible personality that Cort seems to embody.

They are quiet for a long time. Cort gets the steaks going, and some vegetable thing in a foil packet that smells amazing. He brings out more beer and leaves them in a bucket of ice on the patio dining table. The deck seems like the only place with furniture, and Eddie wonders how many times Cort has slept out here, on the lounge chairs. Only one has cushions on it, as if Cort hadn’t expected Eddie to actually show up. It strikes him as a pretty great place to spend a night; a light breeze and the sound of the waves, just enough of a feeling of security with the solid wall of house at your back.

“I’m not going anywhere for a few days,” Cort says eventually. It’s a gesture, somehow, and not as patronizing as it probably should be.

“Great,” Eddie says simply.

After they eat, Eddie tries to clean up, but Cort stops him, throws a bunch of things haphazardly into the dishwasher, and has them back on the patio in time to watch the first sliver of sun dip below the horizon. The sky turns orange, a low stripe under a bar of pink, then blue deepening to violet everywhere else. Cort’s still barefoot, with his jeans and t-shirt same as ever. Eddie is down to the Baywatch t-shirt he’d worn under his button shirt and the pants he’d ironed with Gina’s help. His shoes and socks have been kicked off somewhere near the French doors. The sun feels better on his skin than it has any right to after his ordeal, and somehow his sunglasses have stopped hurting on the bridge of his swollen nose. Eddie tips his beer bottle (third? fourth already?) toward the sunset.

“Why would you ever want to go anywhere else?” he says.

Cort turns to look at him, then back to the beach, a long sweep of a look, surveying from one end to the other.

“I’m starting to see your point there, Eddie. And it scares the shit out of me.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he falls back into the cushions of the chaise and tilts his head to catch some warmth from the waning sun. Cort considering staying put. It _is _a scary thought, a massive shift in expectations, but right there, with another perfect sunset spread out before him, Eddie can’t find it in himself to care. His voice comes out sort of dreamy.

“Hey, do you ever sleep out here?”

“Most nights so far.”

7.

“You should call Craig and Gina and let them know you’re okay,” Cort tells him in the morning. “Not just because of the weird fantasy adoption situation you three have going, but because the other day was pretty scary for Craig, too.”

Eddie shoves Cort away from him, sick of waking up to people in his face. He starts to tell him to fuck off with his adoption comment, because if the two of them auditioned for the role of the wayward man-child of the Baywatch family, Eddie would have to settle for distant understudy to John D. But he smells coffee. And waking up to coffee feels too good for complaining.

“I’m sure Craig’s fine. It’s Thursday, right? He’s lawyering today.”

He tells Cort about the Olympic diving display Craig had put on, too calm and concentrated on form, maybe even showing off, with Eddie fading away in the water. It’s the kind of annoying Craig thing they’d usually mock together. Craig the thinker, who can’t just relax into a crazy skid the way Cort does, or move straight to acceptance and buckling down like Eddie. He’s kind of a huge dork. A great target for their frustration. And Cort can dismantle him like nobody else. The time Craig gave Eddie a hard time about his spelling and abysmal handwriting on his incident report cards, Cort had shrunk the guy down like it was laundry day. But he doesn’t go in for it this morning.

“He’s like that,” Cort says. “The higher the stakes, the more controlled he is. When there’s no room for mistakes.”

Eddie takes the coffee pot Cort has left on the patio table and draws it down most of the way to fill one of the giant mugs Cort had confiscated from the actress’s cupboards. He soon remembers why Cort isn’t allowed to make coffee at headquarters, when he finds it’s made so strong that he almost has to chew it to get it down.

“I’ll call Gina,” Eddie concedes.

He takes stock of his surroundings, the empty beer bottles, the sad grey blanket he’d woken up with. He remembers it had been cold and they’d settled on the same chaise, the one with cushions, to share the only blanket Cort had to offer.

“Aw, man. I’m sorry if I was thrashing too much. I get these crazy dreams, nightmares, you know, about drowning, so after the other day…”

“I know you do, Eddie. But you were fine last night.”

They walk to headquarters together, late for a workout, but on time for jumping into tower assignments. They find Craig scheduled to take Eddie’s normal tower assignment and Eddie forbidden to take on a shift, even when two guards call in sick. Cort winds up having to go with Garner for questioning about the whole Spencer ordeal. According to Craig, there are so many levels of law enforcement involved now, that Cort’s going to have to smuggle himself out on a cargo ship if he wants to avoid another week or two of interrogations.

Eddie suits up despite orders, and tags along with Craig so he can at least cover his water for him if he goes for a late workout. He can be back-up. The assignments are already stretched thin, and Eddie’s section of beach has some routine troublemakers.

“It’s not that you can’t handle it,” Eddie teases. “I just have a rapport with these guys.”

“I’m sure you do. They’re probably juvenile delinquent friends of yours.”

He looks tired, and Eddie feels awful knowing Craig will probably be up late writing and researching for the case work he is supposed to be occupied with right now. That Craig had volunteered to work Eddie’s shift before Mitch even had to ask helps a little. Sometimes Craig just wants a day of guarding. He says it clears his head and that he thinks better when he goes back to lawyering.

“Thanks for offering to take my shift,” Eddie says, for the fifth or sixth time on the day, while he’s propping open the window covers.

“No problem. Although I actually offered to take Cort’s tower. For some reason, Mitch wanted me here. Something about trusting me to keep you out of the water if you stubbornly suit up and hang around all day.”

Craig gestures broadly at Eddie, the real live version of that exact scenario. It earns a laugh, mostly because Eddie is near-giddy with relief at the return to normalcy, at Craig giving him grief and Mitch anticipating his enthusiasm.

“I’m fine. I had a good dinner, got a good night’s sleep. Good as new.”

“You spent the night with Cort?”

Eddie nods. Finished with the shutters, he takes up a relaxed lean near the door, already scanning the water in the well-practiced way that’s become quasi-meditative to him by now.

Craig sets up a chair on the deck but immediately sits on the corner of the railing instead. He’s annoyingly tall, though not as bad as Cort or Mitch, and can easily shuffle a hip over the rail to sit comfortably, one leg extended so his foot can balance him. Eddie has to jump up to sit there, both legs swinging. Even the tall observation chairs are just about a climbing project.

“I thought that house was empty,” says Craig. “No beds or anything.”

“We slept on the patio. There’s this great lounge chair thing there. I slept like a baby.”

They go back to set-up, Craig seems resigned to the fact that he’s going to have a shadow all shift long. He transcribes the tide schedule and Eddie sweeps off the ramp.

“You know Eddie, if you ever wanted to have Cort stay over… at the apartment. We wouldn’t say anything. Or… mind.”

“Um. Okay.”

Eddie’s not entirely sure how his storage room situation is managed with the building’s landlord. Craig had done that negotiation. He hadn’t even considered guests as a possibility, mostly because Eddie didn’t have any friends at the time. He never would have considered letting Cort crash there. Cort seems to stumble onto way better lodgings than Eddie’s glorified closet. He’d never had enough of a place set up in there for having Shauni over, let alone… _oh._ It dawns on him that Craig has misconstrued some things.

“Craig, when I said I spent the night with Cort…”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re happy for you. I gotta say we were worried, at first. Cort being Cort and all. But he’s got such a different… _approach_ with you.”

He says it so casually that Eddie briefly considers he could be messing with him, trying to wind him up. If that’s the case, Eddie rises to the bait anyways.

“Whoa. No. You misunderstood.”

Craig looks at him like he’s sussing out a particularly interesting testimony, which is a change from the usual way, like he’s a simple creature. This one time, Craig is the one who seems confused. His eyes widen when something clicks.

“I thought Mitch told you,” he blurts. “And then there was the dinner… date thing.”

“What? Mitch told me what?”

Craig leans in like the seagulls might overhear him. It would be comically conspiratorial if Eddie wasn’t terrified of what he was about to say.

“About Cort’s… _feelings_?” says Craig.

Eddie blinks dully for a moment. Cort doesn’t have _feelings_. Not like that, anyways.

“Wait. You said we. _‘We were worried’_. So Mitch thinks that Cort and me… Me and Cort… You and Mitch think that me and Cort are… what?”

Craig, at his irritating best, inserts a grammar lesson in his reply.

“I meant Gina _and I_ that time. Gina and I were worried. But Eddie, back up a second. I thought Cort said…”

“_You_ back up a second!”

Eddie hears his own voice ratchet up a notch.

“Nope,” he says, forcing it back down. “No. Whatever funny stuff it is this time, I’m not part of it.”

He can picture so clearly the bemused look on Craig’s face every time he comments on how Eddie is just like Cort. Or not just like him, but a benign miniature version. The squishy mascot costume of whatever wild animal Cort is. And the smirking way Mitch teases about their friendship, slightly disbelieving, like it’s unthinkable that the legendary John D. Cort even puts up with Eddie. It’s insulting to Eddie, but it’s also not fair to Cort, who is friends with almost everyone he meets and would never act out the kind of condescending bullshit that Mitch and Craig…

“I’m sorry.”

Craig sounds sincere and looks contrite, although Eddie can see he has more to say, something that he’s barely holding back.

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll probably leave for Argentina tonight and we don’t have to talk about it any more.”

8.

Cort does not leave for Argentina. Not that night or for the next four days. He does avoid Eddie, though. And Craig and Mitch, from the bits and pieces of headquarters gossip that trickle down to Eddie.

Shauni comes back from her trip. Eddie takes her and a pizza and some cans of Coke to the beach on her second night home. He tells her about the whole story, about the weapons dealer and the duet of near-death experiences. Shauni’s outrage on his behalf is thoroughly satisfying. She has enough firsthand experience with people not taking her seriously that she pinpoints the exact sources of frustration that Eddie has been trying to name all along.

“Craig and Mitch are the worst for it,” she says. “They act like you can’t look out for yourself. Like you’re adorable for even _trying._”

“I’ve always looked out fo—”

“You’ve always looked out for yourself! And John D. Cort. Cort is trying to get you killed. At least he takes you seriously, though. He’d take your advice as much as he’d ever listen to Mitch or Craig.”

He snorts at the idea of Cort taking anybody’s advice, but she’s on a roll, so he doesn’t say anything.

“Not that he’d ever take advice from anybody. But I swear, that’s why he likes you. You don’t act like you know better, like he’s a common criminal, even though sometimes, he really is. And oh my God, Eddie, like he was so mad that time, with Mexico, when Craig tried to take everything over, as if he knew better about everything.”

“Wait. What?”

“Like when Craig horned in on your surfing trip. Not that anything could have happened anyways, because you were so in love with me. Obviously. But Craig going along like the oldest most boring chaperone… like how is Cort supposed to put moves on you with Craig having his midlife crisis all over everyone.”

Eddie loves her like this, confident and energetic. She’s beautiful on a tirade. It’s just that she’s talking all over some pretty tricky territory and he doesn’t have the faintest hope of keeping up. He has one move for times like this, and it’s a dangerous one.

“Craig is like, a walking midlife crisis at this point. I think Mitch and him are jealous, right? Like Cort does whatever he wants and _whomever_ he wants, and I think you’re like the only thing they’ve ever seen him struggle with, so like if you ever did go for it, Mitch and Craig would probably die of—”

Eddie launches himself at her, covering her mouth with his and pushing his tongue past her teeth. They’re in a decidedly _off_ place in their on-and-off saga at the moment, but serious kissing is almost always on the table if he doesn’t go pressuring her for anything more. And he is desperate to silence her, just for a moment. Making out is the only move to slow down the runaway train that is Shauni when she gets like this. She starts kissing back and Eddie cups a hand at the side of her face, not quite smothering a giggle that slips out of her mouth. She pulls away first, but there’s a soft smile on her face. He breathes.

“Can we just… not talk for a bit?”

“Oh, Eddie. I’m sorry.”

He knows, in that instant, that Shauni can help him. He can ask her his stupid questions and she won’t treat him like an idiot. She’s formidable, but she’s in his corner, and not in the faintly paternalistic way Craig and Mitch are.

They talk for more than an hour, and he kisses her again, a grateful sort of contact, and reassuring.

9.

Cort is back on the job, finally working a full shift towards his ten days. He’s on Tower 19, a half mile of sand away from where Eddie is assigned and where Shauni is hanging out wasting her last day off in order to help him with his ambush.

“I think I’ll take a workout.”

“I’m shocked,” says Shauni. “Maybe a jog down the beach, to nineteen and back? I’ll watch your water.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you even know what you’re going to say to him?”

“Not a clue. Not even the first word.”

Cort doesn’t react to Eddie walking up the ramp of Tower 19. He just puts his binoculars to his eyes and steps closer to the railing. But he’s definitely clocked Eddie’s arrival.

“Eddie.”

“Hey Cort.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on 23?”

“Shauni’s covering. Aren’t you supposed to be in South America?”

“I’m getting my ten days in. Been a little distracted up until now.”

Cort lowers the binoculars but keeps his gaze out over the water. Eddie sidles up and leans on the railing beside him facing the opposite direction, his back to the beach.

“Be hard to avoid me for another week and a half.”

“I’m not avoiding you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Yes, I am.” Cort finally looks down at him. “You’re making it difficult to do properly.”

“So what the hell, man?”

“I’m just taking some time. Doing some thinking.”

“Some thinking.”

“Yes.”

Cort stalks to the other side of the deck, and stares back out at the water. Eddie would feel bad about being a distraction except that Cort’s drawn a quiet section of beach for the day, and he’s got a sixth sense about trouble starting up. Just in case, Eddie turns around so he can help keep watch, but he stays on his side of the deck, close to the ramp, leaving Cort some space.

“Whatever you’re thinking about, if for whatever reason it involves me... Could you talk to me about it? Or at least, not to Craig or Mitch?”

“_That’s_ the problem for you? Craig and Mitch?”

Eddie shrugs, but he’s not sure Cort sees the gesture.

“Seriously, Cort. What’s going on with you? You should be long gone by now.”

“The stuff I get up to, it’s not exactly something I can carry on doing for a lot of years, you know?”

“So, what? You’re retiring from whatever it is that you do?”

“That’s actually close to it. For Mitch and Craig, lifeguarding is the lifestyle they had to grow out of. For me, it’s the retirement gig. More safe and stable than anything else I’ve… Hold that thought.”

He’s not surprised that Cort saw it first, it’s his assigned tower after all, but Eddie is impressed at how quickly Cort knew what he was seeing. The guy is on the cusp of “Out Too Far” and at first glance, he appears to be swimming. Eddie follows Cort’s eyeline and it takes him a moment to realize that the swimmer is actually flagging. Cort is halfway across the beach before Eddie gets down to the sand.

It's a routine save, except that Eddie, with nothing better to do, goes into the water after Cort. It’s back-up he probably doesn’t need, but things can go wrong during even the most routine rescues, so Eddie swims out after Cort and trails in behind him at a reassuring distance, close enough for a hand-off if needed.

On the beach, Cort goes through the series of questions and assurances they’re meant to recite with struggling swimmers. It’s surprisingly textbook, for a Cort incident. Eddie can remember a similar save where Cort’s after-incident protocol had been to yell at the victim to _stay the hell off my beach_ if he couldn’t stay within his limitations as a swimmer. This time Cort is almost sweet, giving the guy some bullshit about unusually strong currents to help him save face.

Eddie jogs back to the tower to start the incident report, just filling in the date and time on the clipboard form, giving them a head start on the paperwork.

“What the hell, Eddie,” barks Cort when he joins him on the deck.

Eddie holds the clipboard up in front of himself.

“Just getting the report started?”

Cort hooks the rescue can back up on the bracket and uses both of his free hands to shove the clipboard into Eddie’s chest, hard enough to make him stumble. Eddie is stunned enough that he allows Cort a chance to explain himself.

“It was totally unnecessary for you to get in the water!” complains Cort.

The explanation is unsatisfactory. Eddie lets the clipboard clatter to the floor before he hits back with a left hook, telegraphed just enough so that Cort can take the edge off of it, but still sharp enough to sting him. Cort’s already rushing to an apology when Eddie shoves him, winding up again for another punch.

“What is you fucking problem, JD?”

Cort opens his mouth to respond but nothing comes out. Eddie stares into the cold blue of his eyes and sees a sort of pleading there, a wounded animal sense that is in line with his suspicions.

“Craig and Mitch. They’re not screwing with me, are they?”

His voice is a harsh whisper. He watches water drip from Cort’s hair to his shoulders, the start of the long tall journey down golden skin. It makes no sense. Cort is six-feet-three-inches of physical perfection. Eddie scrapes in close to five-seven. Cort has headlong flings with bombshell wild women at will. The closest thing Eddie’s had to a girlfriend is his role escorting Shauni to events when she’s feeling rebellious and wants to make a point to her father.

“You should get back to your tower,” Cort says finally. “I’m sorry I shoved you. I saw you in the water and flashed on when we thought we’d lost you the other day. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad. Can we just… Can I come over tonight? I’ll bring the beers this time.”

Cort does the open mouth hesitation thing again. Then, he frowns.

“Fine. Yes.”

He turns his attention back out to the water.

“Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”

“Later, Eddie.”

10.

Eddie plans to show up at the house around the same hour as last time, for dinner, so he makes sure he brings something to eat. He ask Gina for advice, what’s a good meal for treading uncharted emotional territory. She gives him elaborate options, but once she realizes it’s about the Cort thing, she tells him to pick up cheeseburgers and milkshakes.

“Don’t take beers over for Cort,” she says. “Trust me.”

So Eddie hits the button on the gate to the actress’s house with his elbow, the tray with the milkshakes, and the bags of food balanced in both of his hands. Cort greets him at the door and takes half of his payload from him.

“This is not beer.”

“Yeah, I thought… clear heads, or something.”

Cort snickers at that.

“No problem. I have some in the fridge… I am starving, though, so this is great,” he adds at Eddie’s evident dismay. Cort has always been uncharacteristically mindful when it comes to Eddie’s feelings, his sense of pride. He’s seen Cort plastered on tequila enough times to know a clear head wouldn’t be an issue after a measly handful of beers.

Cort peers into one of the food bags when they get to the kitchen, and makes a pleased noise. He shoves a handful of fries into his mouth and goes to the fridge for the drinks.

“Sit out on the patio again?”

Eddie nods gratefully. Something about the light out there, the peacefulness of the waves, something about being able to stare out at the beach instead of making eye contact. It makes the most sense to him.

They eat in relative silence. No casual meal time chatter like they’d normally have, about sports, mostly, or sometimes Cort tells stories about his escapades in far away places. This time is just at the ‘Are you going to finish those fries’ kind of level, until Cort slurps the last of his milkshake and delivers his offer.

“We can just forget about it all, if you want to. I’ll tell the guys to shut their mouths from now on. I could take off, if you want me to, leave town. I really don’t even need to keep up the lifeguarding. Hell, I could always requalify if something changes, years from now. Who knows? I’ve probably been hanging on to it for too long as it is...”

Eddie, in a rush to cut him off, takes too big of a swallow, a barely chewed final bite of his burger hurts going down. He reaches for his milkshake, but it’s too thick to help, so he winds up grabbing for the only beer so far opened, Cort’s beer. God, if he was responsible for Cort quitting Baywatch, he’d feel terrible. The guy only ever looks anything like settled when he’s on the beach, patrolling and watching the water. Eddie washes down the food a little desperately before, finally, he’s able to interrupt Cort’s diatribe.

“Don’t leave. We can talk about this. We can talk about anything.”

“I’m not much for talking, normally,” says Cort. But he’s smiling a little as he pulls his beer bottle back out of Eddie’s grasp and drains it before any more of it can be appropriated. He pops opens a second one using a switchblade that materializes mysteriously in his hand.

“Yeah, well, I’ve dated Shauni, so I can teach you all about talking.”

Cort laughs.

“Right. Well, in that case, have at it.”

Eddie hadn’t expected the capitulation. He eats some fries, slowly, staring intently at Cort while he formulates his approach. When nothing comes to him, he drinks his milkshake. When he looks over the table again, he realizes he’s out of food as a stalling tactic.

“So, you like women…” he tries.

“And they like me. I think that’s on the record as it stands,” says Cort.

“You also like… men?”

Cort sighs. “I have. Once or twice. Enough to know.”

Eddie’s head tilts. He likes the way Cort said it, confident, casual, like it’s not something he’d ever consider keeping from him. He considers the only time Cort ever lied to him was when he made him think the water park detail was assigned to him, like he was in Mitch’s doghouse, not Cort. By the time Eddie pieced together that deception, he was mostly just flattered that Cort had wanted his company in the boring assignment foxhole.

“Mitch and Craig know this about you already?”

“They do now. It was never really relevant around them before this whole… thing.”

“This whole thing where you thought you’d killed me?”

Cort closes his eyes and doesn’t respond.

“I get into rough scrapes all the time. You’re not around for a lot, but I’m sort of known for it.” Eddie starts pushing their food wrappers together and shoving them into a single paper bag to throw away. “At least with your messes, I’m not on my own.”

“Eddie…”

“I like you, Cort, I feel like we’ll always be close friends no matter what.”

“Unless I screw it up.”

“Or I do. But we seem to survive all the crazy disasters we get into.”

“No more disasters for me for a while. I promise. If I’m sticking around I’m going to be so careful…”

Eddie laughs at that, a skeptical snort taking him by surprise.

“Don’t go making promises nobody asked for.”

Cort raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. He’s wearing his cowboy hat again, after a stretch without, and something about his lopsided grin seems especially fitting that way. This is good old Cort.

“_Are _you going to stick around?” Eddie asks after a moment.

“Think so. Until the next undeniable opportunity for adventure comes up.”

~Epilogue~

After Cort’s ten days. After another four meals on the mansion’s patio overlooking perfect sunsets. After everything has settled back into the rambling balance of their comfortable, routine friendship. After a night spent at the fights and two beers a piece into sunset number five, Eddie looks at Cort across the patio dining table.

“Can I try something?”

“Sure.”

Eddie leans over and rests one palm on the table between them. His other wraps around Cort’s neck, pulling his face down within reach. He kisses Cort, on the mouth, but fast, and almost sweetly chaste for all the closed-mouthedness of it.

A note of surprise escapes Cort’s throat, a choked out “What—” and then Eddie’s mouth is back, this time with parted lips and seeking tongue, and kissing the hell out of Cort for what feels like minutes but could only have been a few seconds.

“Huh,” says Eddie, when he’s settled back onto his side of the table. He can feel the heat on his face, flushed in equal parts awkwardness and lust. He’s filled with the overwhelming urge to further the experiment, but he keeps his reaction as guarded as possible until he gets any kind of response from Cort.

There is a long moment of silence. Eddie feels like half the sunset passes them by, and still nothing from Cort. Eddie appraises his profile, looking out at the water, always at the water, and not back at Eddie, which is starting to seem like an ominous sign. Cort just looks confused, maybe, or blank. Something categorically unCortlike. Eddie’s mind is backpedalling at breakneck speed, reeling chaotically.

And then Cort has a drink from his beer, smiling around the bottle. He swallows and keeps staring ahead when he speaks.

“I think the undeniable opportunity for adventure just presented itself.”


End file.
